Hi, my name’s Dave, and I am passionate about software engineering. Utterly, ridiculously, head-over heels in love with the capabilities it gives, the challenges it provides, and the enormous variety of processes behind it all. Have been since fourth grade. Will be when they throw dirt in my face. Every bit of it: analysis, architecture, design, coding, testing, refactoring, release, deployment, issue tracking, performance tuning, down to the smallest bug fix. I love thinking about it, questioning its practitioners, stretching its boundaries, and most of all doing it. Usually, they pay me quite a lot to do software engineering, and when they don’t, I do it for free. Passionately.

This is where I share that passion with the world.

What I’m hoping to accomplish with this blog

To explore and clarify my learnings from thirty years of developing software, acquired through trial and much painful error

To centralize all the stuff I have had to teach to every junior developer I ever mentored. That way, when they ask me a question about a mistake they were about to make, I can just send them a URL. This should make the process of ignoring my advice and making their own damn mistakes that much more efficient.

To find and converse with like-minded fools, passionate about software development in all of its aspects. To be challenged by them, and challenge them in turn.

To rejuvenate my passions, by reexamining just what brought me to software development in the first place.

What I’m not looking to accomplish with this blog

To push any particular set of technologies. There will probably be more posts about technologies in the Java ecosystem, simply because that’s where I’ve been working for the last decade, but I don’t intend to limit my comments to the Java world.

To play host to Round #1,458,608 of any technical-religious arguments.

To sell my professional services. Really.

To speak for my current employer, my former employer, or indeed anyone but me.

To rake in those sweet, sweet affiliate program dollars. I’ll occasionally recommend books and products, but will not be doing so for advertising purposes.

What you won’t find here

Views sugar-coated or toned-down to achieve consensus, or to spare anyone’s feelings. Most likely you are doing software development wrong, in some particular, wasting time and money to produce software that is not as good as it could be. I certainly have, and undoubtedly still am. I am not going to be shy about pointing these out

Self-pity about the state of the the software development profession, or any given sub-population thereof. I truly believe software development is the best gig going (with the possible exception of Scarlett Johansson’s masseur) and have limited patience for griping about it.

If that’s your sort of thing, stick around, and don’t hesitate to let me know what you think.